His or her edit pattern is very limited and the time he or she comes are very regularly. Thank you for your notice in advance, and please leave a note on WQ:VIP. --Aphaia 04:08, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Purely by luck, I've just stopped this infamous vandal in the middle of one of his mass page-moves. (This time he chose Netoholic as his handle, which I'm sure will not amuse the more famous Wikipedian by that name.) Unfortunately, they're too sophisticated for me to unravel. He's apparently created redirects to redirects for both articles and talk pages. When I tried to fix vandalism to George Bernard Shaw, even after examining which article and which talk page had the correct history, I botched the speedy-deletes and moves, so that the correct Talk:George Bernard Shaw didn't move with the correct article. When I undid that damage, I somehow managed to lose the page histories of both the article and the talk page.

I am clearly not competent enough to fix this vandal's damage, so I resign from these attempts. I am asking someone wiki-smarter than myself to fix the damage.

Frankly, I'm tired of waiting for the WikiMedia founders and seniors admins to do something about this person. We have enough problems keeping up with ordinary maintenance and anti-vandalism work without having to fight frequent, determined, sophisticated, cross-project attacks that undermine confidence in the wiki philosophy, while the experienced folks appear to do nothing. — Jeff Q(talk) 18:20, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I think everything has now been fixed, someone else should also doublecheck that no garbage has been left around. As to prevent WoW-style vandalism in future, how about we ask the developers to turn on the new user page moving restrictions. If I remember correctly the MediaWiki software has at least two settings that can be used: 1) to specify a minimum number of edits before user can move a page 2) a minimum time that must elapse before user can move a page. Of course this implies sysops need to carry out legitimate page moves on behalf of newbies, i.e., we need Wikiquote:Requested moves. jni 20:33, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

orig. posted to User talk:Aphaia, but due to topic's generality moved to here by Aphaia.

Thanks for the proactive protection, Aphaia. Ordinarily I might object on a policy basis (I think there's something about not doing this except when really necessary, at least on WP), but even if there is, we're too short-handed at the moment to give this resourceful vandal a chance to repeat his already-proven vandalism techniques. — Jeff Q(talk) 11:03, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How about protecting some of the key infrastructure pages against moves? Like Village Pump, Community Portal, VFD, and VIP for starters. Nobody should ever move a central page like Village Pump to a new name without discussion first, so this kind of protection does not hinder any normal users. jni 11:42, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem, Jeff, and thank you for your understanding. I personally don't like to protect pages without present danger, but this vandal is known to come every day, and his edit pattern is very narrow, so i thought it was good to prevent his known edit patterns.

As for Community portal, if I recall correctly, I protected it from move in my earliest sysop days here on Wikiquote; then I was just involved to another moving vandal on meta, and the strategy of this vandal was "to move links on navigation" box. Jni's proposal seems to me good, if necessary we can add "all the link on Recentchangestest" or "major links on Main Page". They are easily victimized from those vandal bot.

Does anyone know when and how often Wikiquote's Specialpages, like Special:Wantedpages, are updated? I'd like to synchronize my review of these pages to whatever cycle exists. Thanks. — Jeff Q(talk) 04:32, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrary. Or when a dev want to do so, they are updated. And if I recall correctly, no fixed schedule of updating exists. --Aphaia 04:47, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How is it that non-sysops and even anonymous users are managing to edit Main page while it's supposedly protected? The most recent changes included an addition of a link to a soon-blanked page by Themmozhi, then vandalism by Mangananna, followed by reversion and a tweak by 67.150.97.20, and finally the test-link removal by Themmozhi. What's the point of protecting the page if anyone can still edit it? — Jeff Q(talk) 09:59, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For recent my protection, I have mistaken. I protected the MP from only move, but from the edit itself ... sorry for my fault. And as for protection bug, under some conditions, this occurs, so for sysop it is recommended to log out once and check if the page is really protected or not. --Aphaia 16:30, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is there any reasonable way to tell if a page is completely protected or just move-protected? I didn't notice any such distinction in the protection log. — Jeff Q(talk) 21:47, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, no. Much worse, the edit botton appearances of those two status for sysops are same(But different for normal editors). It is very annoying for me and I requested once to make a clear different on log somewhere, perhaps on Bugzilla. I think if many people complaint about it, some programers will take it more serious problem *g --Aphaia 02:25, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Could everybody review the nomination of Jni for adminship and vote? I'd like to press for more admins to handle the growing vandalism problem, and Jni is already doing plenty of patrolling for us. He may be relatively recent to Wikiquote, but he has plenty of wiki sysop experience, and hasn't done anything contrary to WQ practices. (In fact, he's one of the few non-sysops participating in our attempts to flesh them out.) He certainly meets the Wikipedia criteria, which is a more detailed version of ours. Also, is it reasonable for a non-candidate (i.e., me) to post on Village pump to encourage folks to consider an active RfA? Thank you for your attention and assistance. — Jeff Q(talk) 09:13, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your support, I appreciate you as nominator ;-) Announcement on VP is a good idea, you remind me some wiki have this practice. Support or not, it is always good for the candidate to have a chance to listen to the community as wide as possible. --Aphaia 15:43, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia, I hope you didn't infer from my statement above that I was claiming to have nominated Jni — you obviously did that. (If I'd done it, I might have said "my nomination".) Perhaps I should have explicitly said "Aphaia's nomination" instead of "the nomination". I apologize for any misunderstanding. — Jeff Q(talk) 19:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I didn't imagine so. So you shouldn't have apologize ... Sorry on my part if my wording sounded aggresively. But I was really happy to hear your suggestion. Anyway in my opinion it is not important who nominated a candidate or even who support him or her -- the important things are we have good candidates as many as possible and they get the community approval. ;-) --Aphaia 20:13, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This vote would have closed just some hours before, but it received a pro and a contra so I think we haven't reached any consensus. Your opinion will be very appreciated. --Aphaea* 19:37, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No consensus generally means "keep", so I think it should be registered as a keep based on the VfD. As I commented in the VfD entry, though, I feel uncomfortable closing the vote, as I registered the sole "keep" vote in what could be construed as a 2-to-1 vote to delete (although I believe it's officially only a 1-1). Both the images mentioned in this VfD need to be properly licensed, which they apparently are not yet. If we can get a license like Wikipedia's for one or both of them, we can initiate a new VfD based on the new licensing info that wasn't available at the time of VfD. If we get no response in a couple of months (or less), we should probably start a new VfD for both images based on the lack of a proper license. — Jeff Q(talk) 13:22, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. As for this request, I support for keeping it, because we lack the consensus how to deal with it. But this is problematic, Jeff said well. I think we need to have "vote expansion rule (like if in a case of tie, the vote continue one more week" or at least have another vote again on both images. --Aphaia 14:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

A user wants to have it, he made it three times in a day. After deleting the second one, I asked him not to do. He hasn't listened. Jni asked him too in the reason of his deletion, but this words didn't reach this editor. Would anyone like to talk with this guy? --Aphaia 13:03, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand what the problem is. I checked all the edits to the main articlespace by John-1107 and 206.255.32.51 (which were only to Independence Day, Darth Vader, and Star Wars), but none of them included links to a user page that I noticed. As far as edits to User:John-1107, we not only allow personal quotes on user pages, we have been encouraging it, so whatever quotes he puts on his user page would seem to be okay. Could someone be more specific about what he did that is against policy? If so, I'd be happy to talk to him. — Jeff Q(talk) 13:41, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to write clearly we deleted them already. Please check this] for its deleted revesions. He posted it again and again, and we deleted it (see Special:Log/delete. See also Recentchanges (now it remains among latest 50 entries)

(Deletion log); 12:46 . . Aphaia (Talk | block) (deleted "John-1107": three times created redirect from main namespace to user page; please stop. In the next time, we should consider another way to prevent your deed; content was: '#REDIRECT User:John-1107')

I left it now for a while to let others look what happens. In my personal opinion, it is obvious ignorance of project policy and worthy to blocked temporally, but because Jeff said he would be able to talk with him, so now I wait for his pursuation. --Aphaia 00:36, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I have been reviewing our documented policies for the past few hours (along with taking notes on a plethora of inconsistencies between our policies), and I'm having a hard time finding official policies that clearly state that you can't create main-articlespace quote articles for yourself. It may be obvious to long-time users, but it may not be to newcomers. Some examples of possible misunderstandings:

Wikiquote:Speedy deletions#The cases: "7. Redirects with no history which have been created by moving user pages out of the article space. (Sometimes new Wikipedians accidentally create user pages in the main article space. Move them into the user space using the "Move this page" tool to preserve their history, and consider waiting a day or two before deleting the resultant redirect.)"

Clearly intended to correct an accidental User page move, not a deliberate redirect creation from articlespace to userspace.

WP guideline to avoid discouraging people with too many rules, but can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous editors (which is why it's controversial).

Wikiquote:Wikiquote: "... whether the authors are famous or infamous, controversial or celebrated..."

What about un-famous?

Since John-1107 has recreated his redirect several times, we have perhaps been a bit too polite about warning him not to repeat his actions. The more brusk "desist" warnings only exist in the deletion log, whose edit summaries aren't available for a deleted page history unless one knows how to use the log. I will give him a clear warning that he will be blocked if he attempts this again, and suggest he post to Village pump if he feels this is unreasonable.

WE NEED to make a more prominent assertion of the differences between the two types of pages [notable and vanity], and clearly state the policy against "vanity pages" for those who are not yet sufficiently prominent to clearly merit an article.

Unfortunately, this is only one of dozens of policy shortcomings and contradictions we currently have. (I'm finally beginning to take notes on them, because there are too many to fix as I come across them, and some should have significant community input.) I don't feel that even 5 active admins and 1-3 active non-sysop editors are adequate to the task of resolving these problems. I think we'll need at least 20 people actively working on Wikiquote policies before we can get a good handle on them. I don't think we've attained "critical mass" in interest yet. — Jeff Q(talk) 09:04, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your closely reports on our current policy situations. I agree on that we need to build up our policies more clearly and efficiency, and on that we are now on shortage of hands. Both topics are worthy to discuss more widely than a group of admins, so I would like to move our discussion place to VP. As for this user, I hope he will listen to your words. --Aphaia 10:18, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to get a practical idea of who our active editors are, rather than very subjective impressions from watching "Recent changes". Wikipedia has a List of Wikipedians by number of edits, listing the top 1000 editors, that gets updated every month or so. Does Wikiquote have anything like this? If not, how can we get it? We could really use a list of the top 100 (or even 50) Wikiquote editors to target folks to ask about becoming sysops and participating in maintenance work. — Jeff Q(talk) 11:24, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

You can ask the editor how he or she generates this list; I assume this list is based on dump data available from the download.wikimedia.org. Rough overiews are available on Erik's table which is issue almost twice a month. According to the latest list, --Aphaia 00:01, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I checked Erik's table and show the contributions of top 62 active editors except those who I had asked already if they had been interested in being a sysop. All of them except one have been now inative since the middle of April. Or it would be still meaningful to put a message on those people, because there is a possiblity they didn't edit but browsing Wikiquote for pleasure. --Aphaia 08:34, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

On VfD, the vote around Faults of the rich was resulted "merge" to Wealth. I copied two entries to the latter, but I am not sure who we should treat this Fotr. Once after merged, it should (or could) be deleted? Any instruction will be welcomed. (On projects I am actvie, it is a custom to keep it as a redirect to preserve its history, but I am not sure it is good here too). --Aphaia 01:18, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I would keep the redirect. I don't think it hurts to retain it. Rmhermen 14:38, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for comment, without worriness I leave it as redirect and archived this entry ;-) --Aphaia 11:53, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

From the data on Erik's page, I see that we have done a good job and gone from 15% of all pages categorized a year ago to 71% today. But I notice that the German Wikiquote is at an incredible 100%. We can beat them, I'm sure! I encourage everyone to add categories to every page they work on. Rmhermen 14:38, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Looks like that it is now possible to delete pages that contain block-compressed revisions. I have already deleted everything from Category:Pending deletions and I think we can get rid of trappings like that completely. jni 17:27, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! When I noticed of PDC bot on Wikipedia, you finished cleanup already! ;-) --Aphaia 01:42, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Please see contribs User:82.77.137.102 (talk · contributions), specially this diff - porn site spamming. On the other hand, other edits on this page from that IP seem to be legitimate editiong. I found this spamming and put an indefinite blocking on this address. But if this address is shared, it is not a good idea to ban it permanently. I would like to listen to you all. --Aphaia 01:42, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

From what I saw in the user contributions, the only "legitimate" edits were the addition of appropriate categories and the removal of a slur that the same editor re-added one minute later. Given the fact that all the 15-16 May edits were made in a 19-minute period, it seems extremely unlikely that more than one person was involved. (DHCP assignments wouldn't be changed in the middle of solid activity, and the first and last edits were similarly vandalistic in nature).

Personally, I don't think the MediaWiki projects do enough to combat this kind of anonymous vandalism. I've prepared the following email to send to abuse@rdsnet.ro, the abuse contact for the RIPE subnet responsible for that IP address (in Romania):

Dear Administrator:

I am one of the system administrators for the English Wikiquote website. Someone using the IP address 82.77.137.102, registered to your network according to www.ripe.net/whois, has been vandalizing Wikiquote by posting pornography links on and adding slurs to the articles. The specific times of these activities were:

07 Mar 2005 00:53-00:54 UTC
15 May 2005 23:57-00:16 UTC

After this latest attack, this address has been blocked from editing Wikiquote. If this address is used by more than one customer, it will unfairly prevent honest contributors from participating on the Wikiquote project. I would appreciate it if you could discuss this inappropriate behavior with the user who is causing this problem, and let me know if we can safely unblock this address again. Thank you for your assistance.

Regards,
Jeffrey Quisenberry
en.Wikiquote.org sysop

I was planning to send it, but a last-minute flash of wisdom suggested that I run it by my fellow sysops before I was this bold. Please let me know what you think of sending this request (and others like it) to the appropriate abuse contacts (when they can be determined). Thank you. — Jeff Q(talk) 08:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. It is a good idea to make a contact to the ISP on repeating vandalism. And your preparing letter seems to me quite polite and appropriate. --Aphaia 21:49, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I didn't send this email because I think it's the kind of thing that needs quick response to be taken seriously (if at all) by the ISP. (I suspect it will be difficult to get them to examine their records anyway.) But if other sysops feel this is a reasonable thing to do, I will plan to send similar emails to ISPs in the future if and when such traceable vandalism occurs. — Jeff Q(talk) 14:02, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Before greeting newcomers, I noticed some pages like User talk:Ira padow and an user page written in Polish. Normally we let each user to use their user page and talk. But the former seem to me a bit aggressive, and the latter seems to me a sort of advertisement. And Wikiquote isn't a blog site like blogspot nor webhosting site like geocities. But I am not sure on both pages, and as for the latter I asked TOR@Polish Wikiquote a help if he let us know his opinion. As for the former I would like you to let me your opinion, if it is really agressive and if so, whether we should ask the editor to modify it. --Aphaia 21:49, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to insist that people communicate primarily in English on en:Wikiquote, even on their user pages. I don't know if we have any policy here or implicit from Wikipedia to back up my opinion.

On the other hand, the nearly incoherent rambling from "Ira padow", although probably not a case of libel, is at least subject to the general approval of the community. (Wikipedia has a specific policy on allowable deletion of "over the top" user pages, although I don't recall it at the moment.) It also violates the shorthand policy of What Wikiquote is not, which clearly states Wikiquote is not a weblog (blog). Furthermore, I have some suspicions about this user and posting. First, if this illiterate person is a "retired teacher", then the U.S. education system is in worse shape that even I imagined. Second, why was it posted to a user talk page? Frequent wiki users might think to create such a page, but a newbie (with absolutely no contributions other than this talk-page ramble) isn't likely to start there, and there is probably no harder place to argue removal of unacceptable content from than a user talk page. Very convenient. Third, the end of the rant says "i love you show and think that we need to not only laugh at what's going on, but get serious too", which makes this whole thing sound like it was lifted without attribution from a call-in radio show. The whole thing strikes me as being other than what it purports to be, although I don't quite see what its purpose would be. We should discuss this with the user. — Jeff Q(talk) 14:26, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

For "Polish" user page, I asked the user in question to add English translation or replace the current one with its English version. I don't mind if someone use other language(s) - it is anyway convinient - but it is not so kind for other editors, agreed.

For the other, I am glad to hear it is not rigidly a libel. But I suspect if it violates "Wikiquote is not a free website" policy too. And even if we allow each editors somehow POVizing self-expression, too aggressive content isn't welcome. Jeff, you are better to talk calmly and sophiscatedly than me ;) Would you like to give a message to the latter editor? --Aphaia 14:40, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see my inept attempt at passing the buck didn't work. ☺ I'll see what I can do. — Jeff Q(talk) 18:25, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I have posted one of my patented verbose commentaries on Ira padow's talk page, asking him to review cited Wikiquote and implied Wikipedia policies and suggesting that he reformulate the material he posted to conform to these policies. We'll see how it goes. — Jeff Q(talk) 02:14, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Already ten days passed. The user in question has given us no reply, nor edit on this project. I think we could erase the content from his talk; if he would like, he could put a modified version on his user page within the allowance of our policies. Has anyone a different idea? --Aphaia 10:22, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ten days isn't very long for Wikiquote issues, but I suspect this person will not respond. I was going to send him an email, but he hasn't registered an address. Combined with the complete lack of activity on Wikiquote, this strongly suggests no interest in using Wikiquote for appropriate purposes. I thought I might give him a bit more time, but nomination for deletion seems likely at this point. — Jeff Q(talk) 15:39, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, ten days isn't too much long, but not too short, and if we list it on VFD, it takes more than 14 days, 24 days are not lesser short anyway. By the way, I prefer to keep the page itself due to your message - it is a good application of "Wikiquote is not" in my opinion ;-) --Aphaia 20:19, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the nice words about my words, Aphaia. Concerning VfD, I'm not quite sure how you feel. Do you think we should or shouldn't list this page there? We do need to give it at least 14 days, but we can easily make it 30 days, if the time seems too short. I was also thinking that, if someone does nominate it, we might post a notice in Village Pump because deleting user talk pages for inappropriate use is something that might get people thinking about maintenance activity. I also want to make sure that people understand the problem is not with the content (given the anti-Bush material and other blatant opining, it's likely to elicit strong reactions from both pro- and anti-Bush folks), but with the lack of any relevance to Wikiquote and its likely use simply as a personal soapbox. — Jeff Q(talk) 20:54, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure if the page should be deleted, though some of its content shoudl be got rid of (and it needn't be technically deleted anyway). Instead of VfD, we ask others if they don't mind we just erase the current content (or just comment it out) on WQ:VP. Perhaps I would be happier in the latter case. (It seems a softer way than deletion from my view).

As for VfD, it would be nice if some unusual request is also announced on VP and that editors are invited to join discussion, specially less people are interested in the discussion itself or request is related to rare issues (like disruptive "user talk"). I agree on that it's not a content issue but violation of our policy "Wikiquote is not a blog". Its content is irelevant if it should be deleted in this case.

w:User:Netoholic, whose well-known username was recently used by the AP vandal, has contacted me to ask that we unblock User:Netoholic, as he has somehow arranged to gain control of that Wikiquote username. I'm reasonably sure it's the "real" Netoholic, as he used his and my Wikipedia accounts to post his request. However, I thought I'd run it by the sysop crew first. Any reason we shouldn't unblock it now? — Jeff Q(talk)

No objections here. I just "tuned in" and observed your bout with the recent spam jerk, and am curious... how did you unblock yourself? I am thinking that backtracking on your browser might have allowed it. I too have actually almost done the same thing, after casually clicking on the wrong link in "recent changes". ~ Kalki 05:16, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I just opened a new window and used the "unblock" link in "Special:Ipblocklist", as usual. w:Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Unblocking says "Sysops are technically able to unblock themselves ... but should absolutely not do so". I was worried that I would have to ask another sysop to undo my stupidity, but the context of that policy implies that someone else did the blocking, for some (possibly unknown) reason. I felt that, since I did it to myself, there was no harm in reversing it. (I suppose I could say that I convinced the blocker into undoing his block. ☺) Incidentally, I learned something about the "block" link in "Recent changes": I think it blocks the last person to edit the listed page, not the listed user. (Normal practice is to block someone first and then repair the damage; I must have fixed the page and then did the block. I was still stupid, because I recall seeing my own ID on the Block page and didn't realize what I was about to do to myself. That's what I get for hurrying to stop a vandal.) — Jeff Q(talk) 05:37, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Support a bit later. If he controls it already, there is no reason to block it anymore in my opinion. --Aphaia 10:17, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have unblocked Netoholic by now. My bad, I somehow missed this discussion, only saw it afterwards. jni 06:47, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Recently we faced some problematic situations (like a potential user talk deletion, vote failing to make concensus like Mahateer image or Vulcan quotes) on which we doubt if two weeks are enough deal with those matters. On the other hand, some votes are really going smoothly and seems not to require two weeks. I feel it would be better we have a set of rule on vote length either shorten or extend it.

I am not sure what is the best. Some good editors among us are not frequent visitors and two weeks vote will be preferable for them. Some really messy content would be better to be deleted much more rapidly. Possible modifications are

If an logged on user proposes to extent, and another editor agree on that, the vote could be extended up to one more week.

Each votes continues at least ten days (not two weeks as currently)

Each votes continues at least one week (seven days), if different opinions arise however (like "keep" vs "delete") or extention is requsted, it could be extended at most more two weeks.

...

Perhaps we review our speedy deletion policy too (currently we deleted some images uploaded to vandalism, but if I recall correctly, there is no fixed rule in that case). And in my opinion, if we accept some unwritten rules as proper ones, it would be better to write down (except really basic ones like "be nice").

Aphaia, your "random" thoughts are quite appropriate and timely; no need to apologize! But deletion policy is a community issue. If you will post your concerns to Wikiquote talk:Deletion policy, I will be happy to add my own random thoughts. ☺ — Jeff Q(talk) 08:15, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Kalki supposed some of those IP addresses was used by one person. And some of them are seems very narrow to each others. Would be a ranged blocking for 24 hours effective? Or (as formerly prepared by Jeff) is it the time to send our complaint to this ISP, specially comcast.net?

Anticipating the closing of the June 16 votes, I find myself unaware of how to delete MediaWiki categories. (I seem to recall trying to do this months ago and finding no Delete tab.) Trying to learn how, I found that this topic seems to be completely ignored by the following logical pages:

Can anyone (A) tell me how this is done, and/or (B) point to some text on the subject? Thank you. — Jeff Q(talk) 15:17, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki category serves today system messages (hence no sysop may delete it - the result would be unhappy). Former, before MediaWiki1.3, it worked as Template currentdays. It is possible we still have some of those relics. Jeff, Can you provide us the MediaWiki file in question? --Aphaia 15:23, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia, I think you misunderstood me, or I wasn't clear. When I say "MediaWiki categories", I refer to the category system that is part of the MediaWiki software; i.e., the stuff that looks like "Category:Britain, Prime Ministers", as opposed to generic "categories" that have traditionally been implemented by "List of" pages. I ask because I plan to close 10 VfDs tomorrow after 17:10 UTC, unless someone beats me to it, and 3 of those are categories that will almost certainly need deleting. — Jeff Q(talk) 20:38, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I misunderstood. "Category vs. List" is one of great dispute and for prime ministers, I think lists are more appropriate than categories. Later I'll comment on each votes, if possible. --Aphaia 21:05, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I found I had no trouble deleting the three categories, as their pages did indeed have "Delete" tabs. (This is probably why there is no documentation on it — it's exactly the same as deleting any other page. ☺) I don't know why I had problems before. Chalk it up to my relative inexperience as a sysop, I guess. — Jeff Q(talk) 10:19, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, the upstart junior sysop is going to annoy his fellow sysops again. I'd like to ask my more seasoned colleagues to be careful to remember to use two basic wiki editing techniques:

Please remember to sign and timestamp discussion page postings. Some of us are getting sloppy about this.

Please use the new-section edit links (like VP's "Create a new topic" or VFD's "Submit a new request") when they're provided. At least two of us have the habit of editing whole pages or, worse yet, editing the last section and adding a new one without adjusting the edit summary to reflect the new section's heading, so that the edit history of the page makes the new section look like an addition to a usually completely different discussion. That's why we have new-section edit links — to avoid this easy mistake. And this isn't a trivial issue. Many times in the past, I've had to track down improper voting on VfD by examining the edit history, and this is made much harder when people don't use the links. We can't eliminate the difficulty, of course, but it would be helpful if the sysops themselves didn't add to the difficulty.

It's hard to get other users to follow these practices when we don't do them ourselves. — Jeff Q(talk) 20:01, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please see the warning at w:Special:Blockip. I'm not sure it applies to WQ, but tread carefully when blocking someone. jni June 29, 2005 08:54 (UTC)

Jni, could you be more specific about what you're warning about? And the link you provide only works for Wikipedia administrators, so I (for one) can't access the page. — Jeff Q(talk) 29 June 2005 10:51 (UTC)

Ups, sorry I forgot that normal users cannot even see the interface. There is a big red warning sign that reads: WARNING! Unblocking (including expiry) is currently disabled for technical reasons, per Brion and Tim Starling. Use extreme caution in placing new blocks as blocks are currently not being expired.. I haven't bothered to track a more detailed discussion about this. jni June 29, 2005 10:55 (UTC)

Well, yes, it affects us all but Tim says "hopefully that will be fixed soon". But in general it is not a good policy to abuse block power. --Aphaia 29 June 2005 16:14 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be an issue of block abuse. If no blocks can be removed, even through expiration, then all blocks are permanent until the problem is fixed (with no real idea when that might be), so all blocks are abuse. But we need blocks to stop vandalism. Not good. — Jeff Q(talk) 29 June 2005 16:28 (UTC)

To make it clear, I don't say about the current issue, but blocking policy in general: "Want is better than excess". As for vandalism, I don't find any problem to put block on them - because some of us have blocked them indefinitely, so there is no change of our attitude toward those disruptive activities. I meant generally excessive blocking isn't a good policy. --Aphaia 29 June 2005 17:06 (UTC)

Well, I'm talking about limited blocks, like the three I just put on IPs in the past two days for vandalism, varying from 1 to 7 days based on scope and repetition. Should we suspend these blocks until the problem is fixed? — Jeff Q(talk) 29 June 2005 18:51 (UTC)

Don't know if this is the right place to be bringing this up but nevertheless, as the main page is protected the link a page where registered users can rank proposals still leads to the June QOTD suggestions & rankings rather than July, could one of the Admins please correct this. Thanks AllanHainey July 1, 2005 08:03 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I've updated the link. Sorry about the confusion. — Jeff Q(talk) 1 July 2005 08:17 (UTC)

He or she edits only Abortion and its talk. He insists to change the article in his or her favor, even though discussion is on-going. If he or she finds what he or she wants in on-going discussion, this anon claims it is "the consensus". This anon doesn't understand discussion on Wikiquote in general is going slowly. It is obvious no one else he or she doesn't use this IP address, it might be not inconvinient to place a relatively long blocking on this address. Right now I put a blocking of 2 days because editing happend again, ignoring the fact discussion hasn't reached the conclusion how sections should be structured or named. --Aphaia 4 July 2005 07:58 (UTC)

Note: I don't mind anyone moves it from the page he or she thinks more appropriate.

Not depending 214..151 and 214..165 are the same person, it is obvious they don't respect discussion on talk and thus deserve to be blocked. If the third similar editing comes from this ISP, we would be better to consider range blocking. --Aphaia 4 July 2005 08:45 (UTC)

Those two addresses couldn't be resolved and FQDN of those hosts were not available. --Aphaia 4 July 2005 14:51 (UTC)

Does this situation really belong on WQ:VIP? It's not vandalism, just a very vocal and uncooperative user. — Jeff Q(talk) 4 July 2005 16:05 (UTC)

I haven't find any other places when I first posted it here. But if he or she really comes back with sockpuppet(s), vIP might be helpful. But I am either not sure VIP is the right place. As I wrote the above, I don't oppose anyone who would move. (WQ:AN perhaps?). If he or she comes back again, and won't change the attitude and waste our time and resources, I think to contact this ISP (DoD) might be helufpl, specially this person try to edit in his or her office work. Any idea? --Aphaia 4 July 2005 23:24 (UTC)

I just blocked another of the many vandals we've been getting. This one made 1 garbage edit and then proceeded to delete sections of List of films, one by one, until I blocked them. Because this was a sustained attack, I decided to be bold and try the action I mentioned above: submit an email to the abuse contact for the given network. Here is what I sent:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

A person using an IP address, 66.222.5.8, registered to your domain recently vandalized a website page from English Wikiquote (http://en.wikiquote.org). Specifically, this person made five edits between 19:32 and 19:35 EDT on Monday, August 29, that added garbage to one page section and deleted the contents of four others. Here are URLs to display the damage done:

As you can see from the last four differences, this vandalism appears to have been systematic and would likely have continued if I hadn't blocked this IP address from submitting further edits for three days, per our site policy.

I would appreciate it if you could check your records to determine which of your subscribers was using this IP address at the specified time, and ask them not to continue this behavior. If it persists, we may be forced to implement longer blocks and possibly range blocks that would prevent other TDS subscribers from using our website fully. Thank you for your cooperation.

Regards,
Jeffrey Quisenberry
en:Wikiquote sysop

I will report on any results I get here. Meanwhile, I invite comments and criticisms. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 00:05, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

How do you find the abuse e-mail from the IP address? I probably used to know this and forgot :( ~ MosheZadka(Talk) 03:23, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I use either of two sites, Network Solutions WHOIS or ZoneEdit NSLookup, to get the DNS info attached to an IP address. If you're lucky, you get a "OrgAbuse" section that includes an "OrgAbuseEmail" entry. Otherwise, you can either assume the contact is abuse@SameDomainAsTechContact, or send an email to the TechEmail contact. Often you'll get a DNS record for a regional organization (like RIPE or APNIC) that includes another URL to do a nslookup within their network. In those cases, you need to repeat the lookup process until you get to the narrowest network allocation, then email its abuse contact. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 06:45, 30 August 2005 (UTC)